Slice-based digital volume assembly of a small paper sample

Digital volume images can be created by assembling a stack of 2D images. By using a microtome for slicing, a Scanning Electron Microscopy for imaging and digital image analysis tools, we were able to create a small digital volume from a paper sample of Duplex-board. Imaging the surface of the embedding rather than the cut-off slices, was crucial in minimizing geometrical distortions. The use of reference threads ensured a good registration with small errors and reasonable effort. For visualization purposes, we used a surface renderer based on the Marching Cubes algorithm. Although the reconstruction process is time consuming, it is a viable method for creating volume images of paper with micrometer resolution.